An Analysis of Occupational Health and Safety Risks in Canadian Police

This essay provides a detailed examination of the occupational health and safety risks encountered by Canadian police officers. It begins by highlighting the significant role police officers play in Canadian society and the various hazards they face, including physical risks like homicide and assault, and psychosocial risks such as stress, sexual harassment, and discrimination. The discussion delves into specific categories of risks, including physical dangers, health issues like fatigue and cancer, psychological stressors like stress and discrimination, and the alarming issue of suicide among officers. The essay explores the causes and consequences of these risks, referencing relevant studies and research. It also identifies areas where more comprehensive measures are needed to address these concerns, particularly in rural areas and for female officers, and concludes by emphasizing the complexity of policing and the need for continued efforts to mitigate these risks for the well-being of the police force and the public they serve.

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Answer:
Introduction:
The police officers play a very significant role in Canadian societies. These officers are
involved in various aspects of the life of Canadian people. The involvement of officers ranges
from daily, general patrol activities to particular criminal affairs like narcotic investigations.
Since there lies a lot of activities within police job, there are several health and safety risks in
such occupation (Knaak et al., 2019). The policemen can be subjected to various health as well
as safety risks. For instance, they are at the risk of homicide and assault. Apart from this, they
even face many psychosocial risks like stress, sexual harassment, stress and even discrimination
(Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Public Safety and National
Security, & Oliphant, 2016). It is needed that these hazards together with the ways to curtail
them must be identified and executed to reduce the risk. Failure to address these concerns can
result into serious consequences for the health of these policemen. Such consequences include
suicide, depression, divorce and diseases. If such consequences are not curtailed, then public
health will be affected too. For instance, when a policeman is under stress or depression, he may
not work properly and perform his duties to the best of the public interest. Fatigue can also
increase the chance of car accidents, thus public life is endangered. This essay enumerates
various occupational health and safety risks which they face daily or at any point in their career.
The essay also highlights the areas in this regard where more steps must be carried out.

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Discussion:
In this part of the essay, several categories of risks are discussed like physical risks,
health issues, chemical risks, air pollution related diseases, ergonomic risks, psychological risks,
discrimination, suicide and others.
Firstly, under the head of physical risks, several factors will be decided (Crawley et al.,
2016). Though Canada has a comparatively lower rate of homicide for the policemen when
compared to other countries, still it must not be ignored. It is observed by Leenaars & Lund that
data regarding murder of the policemen reveals that Canada hold 4th position among 14 countries
in the rates of policemen murdered during their duties in the year of 1970 (Leenaars & Lund,
2017). It is also seen than rate of Canadian policemen homicide was .0155 per one million
people of the population when compared with United States.
It is also observed that assault risk for the policemen when compared with other
professions is quite high in Canada. Various studies revealed that policemen are at high risk of
time loss because of violence. The data for these studies are collected from Workers’
Compensation Board Records (Wranik, Muir & Hu, 2017). There is a high probability that a
policeman may get assaulted when preventing robbery, when arresting or when transporting
prisoners or suspects. The Canadian research shows that the perpetrators involved in these types
of acts of violence on policemen are mainly young, economically, socially disadvantages males.
Another serious health issue faced by the policemen is fatigue (Andersen & Papazoglou,
2015). It is mainly caused due to long working hours of the policemen who have generally a shift
of 12 hours. It is relevant that duty for 12 hours can result into extreme stress and fatigue among
the policemen.

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The areas of concentration for the researchers interested in fatal disease cancer among the
Canadian policemen are the causes behind cancer in policemen, its incidence and its types
(Harris et al., 2018). Several researches conducted in this regard showed that the cancer is caused
mainly due to effect of radar devices. Several studies dealing with the medical history of
policemen of Canada revealed that these policemen had a high risk of various cancers like brain
tumors, leukemia but these studies failed to conclude that cancer as caused due to radar devices.
However, many eminent researchers suggested that an association is there between cancer
disease suffered by the policemen in the police department and using of traffic radar or other
occupational exposures of the policemen.
Another concern that is an issue for the policemen is susceptibility of them to the back
problems. Though information is less, lower back pain appears to be one of the most common
types of diseases that influences and affects the lives of many policemen (Benyamina, Côté &
Lacasse, 2018.). The research conducted on back problems among the Canadian policemen has
focused on this risk. A group of scholars in Canada conducted a survey on random members of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to determine if back problems were more common
in these people than the general public(Benyamina, Côté, & Lacasse, 2018). These researchers
held that prevailing back problems among the RCMP officers was same as the general public and
the police officers are not having higher probability of back problems because of some aspects of
their job as riding inside a patrol car throughout the day or wearing seatbelt.
Psychological risks faced by the Canadian policemen involved stress. Canadian
researchers after making thorough research found that policing is a very stressful job (Stuart,
2017). The research focusses on the sources of stress suffered by the police officers and its effect
on them. Some of those researches even provide solutions for combating stress suffered by them.

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The psychological, emotional and physical stressors in the work of police can be divided
into three classes namely; individual sources, intra organizational sources and extra
organizational sources. Individual stress sources depend on the personal qualities and
characteristics of the policemen that render them susceptible to stress. Intra organizational stress
emanates from the stress factors that are prevailing within the organization of the police. On the
other hand, extra organizational sources of causing police stress comprise of factors that can
result into stress outside the organization of the police.
Biggs & Brough, have identified mainly two extra organizational causes of police stress
comprising of criminal justice system and the relations of police with the community (Biggs &
Brough, 2016). There are also various court specific stressors that revealed how the police
officers faced a stressful impact due to the effect of the criminal justice system. These court
specific stressors are significant examples on how the criminal judicial system imposes a
stressful impact on the minds and health of police officers. These court specific stressors are
problems faced by the police officers during scheduling appearances, when being cross
examined and the impressions that the court shows lenient attitude to the criminals.
The relationship of the police with the community is characterized by anxiety and
pressure between the demand and want of the community and what is entailed by police work.
The public expects a deterrent approach from the police men but the activities of the police are
greatly service oriented; for instance, dealing with family fights. Such anxiety and tension can
affect and eventually worsen the relation between the police and the community and also can
increase the alienation of police from society and result into a conflict and gap between them.

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Intra organizational sources can comprise of physical danger of shift work, job and
structure of the organization. The physical danger present in the service of police imposes major
anxiety and stress on them as their work exposes them to dangerous situations. One of the
dangerous situations faced by the police is the using deadly force by them. Such usage of deadly
force can have tremendous psychological effect on the minds of the police officers. It is also seen
that impact of shooting is so serious that the average time taken by the policemen to get back to
the normal life was around 20 weeks.
The final category of stressors on the policemen is the character of the individual
policemen. Though many researchers show no distinct personality or character of the policemen,
there lies an increasing unanimity that the stress factors often create some behavioral
characteristics among them. For instance, a police officer can gradually become rigid, suspicious
and cynical. Further, after dealing and interacting with cases of cheating, lying and hostile
persons, policemen can begin to mistrust friends and even family members. As an effect of these,
the policemen can also develop negative outlook toward their family and work.
Stress can further hit hard the lives of the policemen. One of the negative results is the
marital problems faced by the police officers. Other impacts of stress on policemen are use of
alcohol, drugs and suicide. Another stress connected result for the policemen is the physical
symptoms. Researchers propose that the policemen out of stress and anxiety can suffer from
different kinds of discomforts like headaches, backaches, poor appetite, stomach aches, being
tensed, sleeplessness and even nightmares.
In order to combat with these mental stresses, one solution that can be suggested is that
the police officers must be allowed a counseling session or therapy after they have undergone

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any stressful incident. Another way can be suggested is psychological debriefing immediately
after a lethal incident. Third solution to distress a police officer is allowing a brief period of leave
from duty such that police can spend time away from the duties, with family and friends. The
final solution that can be proposed is training police such that they can address these problems by
going through stress management.
Discrimination is another type of psychological problem that is associated with
workplaces (Andersen & Papazoglou, 2015.). They stated that regarding concerning
discrimination inside the police forces focusses on the hiring and promoting practices followed
in the departments. Discrimination is also observed on the practices involved regarding ranks and
positions of women and minorities hold in such departments. It is revealed that in absence of the
recruiting and the promotional practices, aggressive attention and direct recruitment of
aboriginals, women, minorities and disabled people, the recruitment will be sporadic and erratic.
Another study made by Stuart revealed supporting evidence for the want of promotion of
the police women (Stuart, 2017). Women had begun to make their way to the lower supervisory
ranks particularly in the major police force. These women have not reached the ranks of senior
management except in some cases. Another psychological problem revealed among the
policemen was the increasing number of suicide rates among them. There are many reasons
revealed behind committing suicide of the policemen. The main reason behind suicide
committed by the policemen is the stressful and threatening nature of the police duty regarding
the work pressure, shift work and getting exposed to violent and life threatening incidents. The
most common ways employed for committing suicides are use of guns, hanging and even
exposure to carbon monoxide. However, in general it is seen that policemen have lower rates of
suicide when compared to general public. All these show that suicide committed among the

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members of the Canadian police force has not been addressed like a concern and hence, no such
effort is taken to curb it.
Conclusion:
Policing is one of the most complex occupations. Presence of differences in the job
design and the circumstances in which they work further adds to its complexity. As a result of
the complexity of policing, exposure to risks vary inside the force, among and between the forces
and also internationally. Though many steps and measures have been taken to combat the
problem that lies in policing, yet some weaknesses and gaps are still there that have to be
breached to uproot the problems absolutely. The first weakness is that most of the measures that
have been taken are concentrated for addressing stress, fatigue and homicide (Papazoglou,
Koskelainen, Tuttle & Pitel 2017) Other health and safety issues are simply overlooked.
Secondly, the steps and measures have limited application in rural areas. Most of the measures
are taken among the urban policemen. Another gap that is observed that apart from
discrimination, situations of the female policemen were never considered. By restricting the
application on the male policemen, overall addressing of the health and safety issues can never
be solved. In brief, after going through the essay, it appears that only the issues regarding
occupational health and safety problems of the policemen have been and very little measures are
taken, much is left to combat it.

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References:
Andersen, J. P., & Papazoglou, K. (2015). Compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction
among police officers: An understudied topic.
Benyamina Douma, N., Côté, C., & Lacasse, A. (2018). Occupational and Ergonomic Factors
Associated With Low Back Pain Among Car-patrol Police Officers. The Clinical journal
of pain, 34(10), 960-966.
Biggs, A., & Brough, P. (2016). The potential benefits of police culture and support and work
outcomes among police officers. In Stress in Policing (pp. 309-322). Routledge.
Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Public Safety and National
Security, & Oliphant, R. (2016). Healthy Minds, Safe Communities, Supporting Our
Public Safety Officers Through a National Strateegy for Operational Stress Injuries:
Report of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. House of
Commons= Chambre des communes Canada.
Crawley, A. A., Sherman, R. A., Crawley, W. R., & Cosio-Lima, L. M. (2016). Physical fitness
of police academy cadets: Baseline characteristics and changes during a 16-week
academy. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 30(5), 1416.
Harris, M. A., Kirkham, T. L., MacLeod, J. S., Tjepkema, M., Peters, P. A., & Demers, P. A.
(2018). Surveillance of cancer risks for firefighters, police, and armed forces among men
in a Canadian census cohort. American journal of industrial medicine, 61(10), 815-823.

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Knaak, S., Luong, D., McLean, R., Szeto, A., & Dobson, K. S. (2019). Implementation, uptake,
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Leenaars, A. A., & Lund, D. A. (2017). Suicide and homicide-suicide among police. Routledge.
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compassion fatigue and negative personality traits in impeding the promotion of police
compassion satisfaction: A brief report. Journal of Law Enforcement, 6(3), 1-14.
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Wranik, W. D., Muir, A., & Hu, M. (2017). Costs of productivity loss due to occupational cancer
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